Climbing the Tree

Qabalah could be thought on as the mathematics of the esoteric with the literary side consisting of legends, myths and lore. In Qabalah numbers have a deeper significance. This could be because numbers have mystical properties in themselves, or it could be that numbers, being the purest of symbols, are appropriate entities to hang metaphysical concepts on.

It is difficult to imagine, but the originators of Qabalah had a very different number system from the one we are familiar with today. There is a difference between cardinal numbers (how many there are: 1, 2, 3 ...) and ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd ...). To represent cardinal numbers the early Semitic people used letters : aleph = 1, beth = 2, ... This is the basis of Gematria, where words also have numerical values.

The Sephiroth and Paths of Qabalah represent ordinal numbers. And these have a deeper siginificance because Kether, the first emanation of the Divine, really represents the first, the first thing to exist. The number system we use in the west today is suited to modelling our environment and using these models to manipulate matter. The number system of Qabalah is suited to modelling metaphysical concepts and gaining insight.

There are 10 Sephiroth. Ten is of significance to us because it is the base of our number system. 10 is the 4th triangular number (i.e. 10 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4), and this is true in any base.

Ten is also the 3rd tetrahedral or triangular pyramidal number. This is also a property that is independent of base.

In the animation above there are ten spheres counting from the yellow layer to the top. Ten is the sum of the first three triangular numbers : 10 = 1 (black) + 3 (red) + 6 (yellow). Ten itself (blue) is the next number in that sequence.

Yesod is inside the triangle of Malkuth  Hod  Netzach. On the site borndigital.com (aka ifdawn.com) it is suggested that Yesod corresponds with the Buddhist principle of Samsara.

Along the lines of the comic writer Alan Moore, I tend to think on Yesod as imagination. In his comic Promethea Moore identifies Yesod and Hod as two spheres that are readily accesible and important to the magician. In an interview Moore said :

Creating comics is a mesmeric world of words and pictures and I spend most of my day there.

In Hod Moore manipulates language to create a narrative. Hod can be accessed through an internal monologue, or symbols. By symbol I mean a mental image that represents an object or concept quite definitely (e.g. a graph), not the sometimes fantastical, imaginative mental images of Yesod.

The inner conflict can be transcended by getting here, the centre of the Tree. Paths lead to every Sephira, except Malkuth. A state of altered consciousness. Consciousness of consciousness There is no direct route back to Malkuth. Tiphereth literally means Beauty. Beauty in a general sense is something that facilitates joy. Gold, the purified consciousness of Alchemy.

The Romans wouldn't have persecuted the early Christians if there was nothing in it. Originally there was something in it : joy, love, light, warmth, gold  the agape, the love feast. Christ may have been an initiate of The Essenes. The time wasn't right to talk openly about Tiphereth. There is a cross or tau in the Tree, made out of the four Sephiroth Malkuth (earth)  Tiphereth (air)  Binah (water)  Chokmah (fire). It could be seen that talking about the Tree was the undoing of one Yeshua ben Yosef.

In Crowley's order Tiphereth corresponded with the grade Adeptus Minor. Crowley possibly wanted to bring people to joy as a reaction to Victorian society. While mountaneering with Eckenstein, a big influence on Crowley, they heard Queen Victoria had died. Crowley was overjoyed.

Queen Victoria looking suitably happy.

One way to experience joy is through great art.

A work of great art, The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dali

Crowley called the card joining Yesod to Tiphereth Art.

The traditional card is called Temperance. This concept was possibly alien to Crowley. The card from the Thoth deck uses dualistic imagery, a lion and an eagle fighting, representing transcending the inner conflict between Hod and Netzach. To get to joy, the magician requires temperance to create art of some sort, whether that be a painting or a working.

Variously translated as strength, power, courage or heroism, Geburah represents the magician's Will in action. The discipline and perseverance required to make changes happen. The card joining Geburah and Chesed is traditionally called Strength.

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations ; of Gods, Spheres, Planes and many other things which may or may not exist.

It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow ; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

Issue 20 of Alan Moore's comic Promethea is devoted to Daath and the Abyss. In Moore's version there used to be a Sephira Daath and back then the Tree and the world were perfect. Something happened to Daath, it blew up, fell off the Tree or fell into disrepair. This is why the world is a bit of a disaster area. Moore includes two now defunct paths The Beggar and The Fountain, joining Chesed to Daath to Binah.

Moore develops the idea of a hole or a rip in the fabric of reality  The Crack. This was an idea developed by Grant Morrison in his comic The Filth. From The Filth :

The crack runs through evrything. And everyone. Without it we would be perfect, like angels, and as dull.

Grant Morrison said his Abyss experience was harrowing. He was physically and mentally ill and attempted suicide more than once.

The Abyss is where the magician meets himself. Hidden behind the veil of the Abyss is Daath, which means knowledge. Self-knowledge, higher knowledge, knowledge about knowledge.

Whatever it was the magician built on to climb this high, it was all arbitrary. The magician realises that a lot of human knowledge and activity are similiar. A lot of human knowledge and activity is 'made up'.

Traditionally Choronzon is associated with the Abyss. He is not a fanged, horned demon. He could be a TV programme, or a daydream. Choronzon represents wandering thoughts, which cause the magician to lose focus.

Ain Soph Aur

The source of the Sephiroth. The nothing that something, Kether, came from. Translated as Limitless Light this points to infinity.

The mathematician Cantor thought he had found Ain in mathematics. He called it Aleph null, the smallest transfinite cardinal number. Infinity and nothing are related. In a simple example if there are infinitely many integers, both positive and negative, they sum to zero.

The Serpent

The Flaming Sword

The Flaming Sword is the route back down the Tree, making a zig-zag lightning bolt through all the Sephiroth. I don't think on this as the big bang, I think on it as something that is happening all the time, like a strobe light flashing, creating this.

Back to Earth

Cellular Automaton.

Back in Malkuth Stephen Wolfram has been doing some work on developing models of the physical Universe. In his book A New Kind of Science Wolfram suggests that cellular automata produce good models of the universe. Undoubtedly there are some interesting results in the book.

If the universe is like a giant simple programme, an iterative algorithm, what is the clock pulse that makes the programme step through ? What makes the cellular automaton change state ?

The clock pulse of the Universe could be seen as The Flaming Sword flashing down, changing the state of an incomprehensibly huge binary system.

In Douglas Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Adams suggests that the meaning of life, the Universe and everything is 42.